FESTUS — A chimpanzee facility near Festus has agreed to give up four of its primates in a deal to settle four-year-old claims that the animals were being held in unsafe and unsanitary conditions.
Three remaining chimps will be heading to southeast Missouri.
U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry on Tuesday entered a final judgment in a case that involved the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, the chimps’ owner and Connie Braun Casey of the Missouri Primate Foundation, which is the facility near Festus.
The foundation, which once bred the animals and farmed them out for movies and commercial purposes, has seven chimps now.
An Oct. 2 consent decree says ownership and custody of four of the chimps, Tammy, Connor, Candy and Kerry, will be transferred to the in Wauchula, Florida. That sanctuary is accredited by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries, the agreement says.
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The three other chimps, Crystal, Mikayla and Tonka, will stay with their owner, Tonia Haddix. But Haddix must construct a new “Primadome” exterior enclosure and “night house” for them that meets certain space and construction standards. She will also have to hire a full-time chimpanzee caregiver and a part-time maintenance worker and arrange for experienced volunteers to help care for the chimps.
If the consent decree’s requirements are not met within a certain time period, the chimps will also go to the Wauchula sanctuary.
Haddix is also barred from breeding the chimps or owning any new ones.
Haddix said she was planning a “really nice, new facility” in Stoddard County. She said she was keeping the chimps that are the most socialized and accustomed to humans and would have the most difficulty adjusting to the sanctuary. Tonka, she said, “is the most humanistic chimp there is,” and has an enlarged heart. Crystal and Mikayla once lived upstairs at Casey’s house in an enclosure, she said.
“I just hope that the (other) chimps do OK,” she said.
As part of the agreement, PETA will scrub from its online publications and refrain from mentioning her in any future publications.
In November, Perry terminated the ownership that a man had of a chimpanzee named Joey, which had once been at the foundation. She ordered the man to send the chimp to Florida in March and reiterated that order on Aug. 24.
The man had placed Joey in an undisclosed location, PETA’s lawyers have said, and later with , who appeared in the Netflix documentary “Tiger King.”
Jared Goodman, a PETA lawyer, said in an email that, “PETA is pleased that it has been able to secure the removal of every chimpanzee from the Missouri Primate Foundation, a substandard facility where, experts agreed, these endangered animals have been held in conditions that fail to meet their complex needs, causing them psychological suffering and threatening their well-being.”
In 2016, PETA about the facility, at 12338 Highway CC, in a YouTube video after being contacted by a former volunteer there. The group said the facility was used to breed chimps that were sold to roadside attractions and used in movies or on Hallmark cards.
In 2018, Casey’s lawyers offered to have a special master or guardian find homes for the chimps, saying she “cannot emotionally, physically or financially endure drawn-out litigation utilizing bullying tactics.” In a statement, the lawyers called PETA’s claims “false and vicious.”
